Chapter 11 – The siege
It was two days before the outer ranks that were at the entrance to the garage started to filter away. I know this because I stripped a corner of insulation from inside of the roof above me and forced some of the roof tiles out of the way. Just enough to get my head and shoulders through. I could smell that the throng in the living room was still there in full force but they had quietened down a lot since they lost sight of me. The deedaz that wandered off were attracted to a faint humming noise I could hear in the distance. It sounded like an engine in full revs but it wasn’t loud enough to draw the rest away.
The previous two days had given me a lot of time to watch and study the revenants that wandered the street. Most of them had very few injuries. The odd bite here and there. Mostly on the forearms. The ones that had been really disfigured must have been set upon by a multitude of attackers. The deedaz seemed to lose interest in eating the victim as soon as it turned which, by my estimation judging by Max’s transformation, was under thirty seconds after he’d first been bitten. There was nothing left of Alice to turn.
I also deduced that the deedaz became excited if they were stimulated either by sight or sound. At the time I didn’t think their other senses worked anymore and that they surely couldn’t smell their prey because of the awful stench coming from their own putrid decomposing bodies. I didn’t think they could taste either. I saw one of them tucking in to Alice’s lower colon and that was full of shit, so taste was definitely out. Nor do I think they could feel pain or do they fear for their own self-preservation. They didn’t bat an eye when that car tried to make a break for it and ploughed into them at the end of the street. They just got up, if they could, and attacked. The ones with legs beyond repair simply dragged themselves around the ground looking for scraps. There were no cries of agony from any of the deedaz.
Apart from the odd curtain twitch I had neither seen nor heard another surviving neighbour. I had heard uncountable screams from other residents of Cramlington and a lot of car horns, but two days later I was left only with the distant moaning of the damned and the engine noise in the distance.
The supply situation was going considerably well. Mainly because I wasn’t eating that much. The towels I had used to block the gaps around the loft hatch had dried out and the ammonia laced aroma of the deedaz in my living room was seeping through and ruining my appetite. I could go down to the first floor and soak them again in the bath tub but risked arousing the dead fucks from their partial stasis.
Hours turned into days turned into weeks turned into a month and there I was still living like a hermit. Shitting in a bucket and pouring the contents out of the hole I’d made in the roof. If this thing ever blows over and things go back to normal, I must make a note not to clean those gutters. Eeww.
The boredom was the worst thing. Endless hours of being afraid and thinking about the different ways you may reach your eventual demise can drive a person mad.
The daylight hours were passed by reading under the natural light that entered through the hole in the roof. I still had lots of candles left but refused to light more than one per night and reading was virtually impossible with a single tea light.
Luckily I’d had the foresight to take with me my collection of every Trail magazine printed in the last ten years. Although being able to ever visit the places and mountains featured in the publications was highly unlikely to ever happen.
Believe it or not the only thing I truly missed was the gym. Of course I missed a normal life and all it entails, i.e. not fearing for your safety every second of the day. But I’d never been much of a people person. Yes, I had a lot friends but wasn’t really close to any of them. I’d keep myself to myself most of the time and the only person who really knew me was the ex. When talking to random people at work or out and about, I used the same old phrases and conversation topics time and again. I always got the feeling when talking with people that they weren’t actually listening to what I said, they were just coming up with ways to insert their own agenda into the conversation. Never asking questions, just wanting to big themselves up.
So the solitude I was experiencing while being forced to live in the loft was something that didn’t really affect me as much as it should. Well, maybe I missed people a little, but not as much as I missed the gym.
As you’ve probably realised by now, I have a serious problem with addiction. My addiction at the time was fitness. Not a bad addiction to have, I know, but as you can probably guess, I took it a little too far. I’d spend an hour in the morning, an hour at lunch time and two hours at night in the gym. Interspersed with lots and lots of running. In the space of a year I’d lost nearly four stone and at forty-two was the fittest I’d ever been in my life. Sigmund would say I wasn’t doing it for myself, I was doing it for the ex. Maybe if I was fitter than her new boyfriend, Mr Fucking Motivator, she’d lose interest in him and want me back. Perhaps he’s right. All I knew was, when I was exercising, it was the only time I didn’t think about her. I think that’s what I was probably addicted to at first. Now, however, being able to look in a full-length mirror and not see man boobs was what I craved, so Mr Freud could suck a fart right out of my arse!
My food supplies were still plentiful but the water situation was becoming a problem. I had been washing myself every day with wet wipes, but the majority of my food had been dehydrated and needed to be soaked in water to make it edible. The water from the pans I’d retrieved had lasted for a week and a half. If I was desperate I could get some from the bath but I didn’t really trust the water in there anymore. It had become stagnant and god knows what else was in it. The house wasn’t exactly clean at the moment with all my guests downstairs and the risk of airborne particles floating upstairs from them and landing in the exposed bath were too great. The bathwater would definitely have to be a last resort. It would have to be thoroughly boiled before consumption and would have made a rather large dent in my portable gas supply.
Also, the weather had been uncharacteristically dry all summer. Here in the northeast, summer usually lasted for around a week during the month of May. The rest of the time it pissed down with rain. I’d laid a tarp out on the roof that faced the back garden and folded the bottom corners inward so as to funnel rain water down through a six-inch hole I’d made in the roof. Underneath the hole was one of the large containers. The trouble was the lack of rain. The condensation that accrued on it every morning wasn’t even enough for a mouthful. The effort it took to squeegee the minute droplets down to the funnel made it not worth the while.
All utilities had ceased around about the same time after the first week. I know this because at first I thought the bulb in the loft had blown but then noticed the street lights had stopped working too. This wasn’t too much of a problem and the candles would suffice as long as I didn’t burn the place down.
I knew the water mains were off because the severely leaky tap I’d asked the landlord to fix, on three separate occasions, had finally stopped dripping. Every cloud has a silver lining I suppose.
After I’d read my library of magazines for the third time and with the smell drifting in from the shit in the roof gutter, thoughts of the best way to commit suicide started popping into my head. I decided enough was enough.
A line from a song by the Geordie super group ‘The Animals’ popped into my mind.
‘We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do!’
Chapter 12 – The outing
Planning my exodus from the confines of the loft space was frustrating, simply because I had no intel on the situation outside of my street. For all I knew the roads and cycle path system throughout the estate were packed with wandering dead fucks or clogged up with escaping cars that didn’t make it out past the congestion of panicking survivors on the roads. It could be absolute mayhem out there. The last thing I wanted was to speed out of the street in the van, turn the corner and become stranded in traffic. I had no plan for embarking in the
van at that time but I was sure I’d come up with something if the roads were clear enough to escape. I needed to do some reconnaissance before I leapt into a decision of this magnitude.
I got to work.
The street I lived in, as I explained before, is a cul-de-sac which consists of semidetached houses with garages on each side which are then connected to the garages of the next pair of semidetached houses. So technically the houses aren’t detached at all, it’s more of a terrace row with garages that sweep around in an arc shape.
My home was exactly four plots away from the entrance to the street. If I’d lived in the house directly opposite me I would have had an unrestricted view of the main road exiting the estate from its roof. But I didn’t. I needed to get to that house to see if an escape with the van would be viable.
The street was still full of deedaz milling around, so going down and through them was out of the question. The only way I could think of doing it was to roof hop. A little like the garden hopping I used to do with my friends when I was young. One of the most exhilarating and favourite pastimes of my youth. That and knocky door ginger.
The aim of garden hopping was to get from one end of a street to the other without getting caught by the owners of the gardens we ran through. The only differences between garden hopping and roof hopping were that I’d be carrying the ladders for the roofs and if I got caught by anyone I wouldn’t be frog marched around to my mum by the ear. I’d be torn to shreds!
Luckily all of the garages were flat. The only dangers that faced me were if a stray foot went through a house roof or falling off and breaking my neck. Which would be preferable to falling off and breaking my leg, which would condemn me to a fate worse than death, i.e.
being eaten alive
It was still summer, the roofs were dry so slipping shouldn’t be a problem. The problem was attracting the dead fucks with the noise I would surely make.
I decided I would set off a couple of hours before sunrise. At this time of the year it never really got pitch black dark so hopefully I could be there and back before it got too bright. I set the alarm on my watch and lay down on my not so clean duvet and got some shuteye.
After waking I readied myself and had a bite to eat before I left. I climbed through the hole in the roof, pulled the ladders out, climbed to the apex and shuffled down the side facing the back garden. Most of the other back gardens were empty, although mine had a fair few deedaz aimlessly standing in and around the flower beds. Or should I say weed beds.
I quietly lowered the ladders down to the garage roof. I had wrapped the dried towels, that were on the loft hatch, around the feet and top of the ladders and secured them with lashings of gaffer tape. Hopefully this would deaden the sound when set up against the walls.
Taking the utmost care and without making any noise it took me ten minutes to climb down, walk quietly along the garages and climb up to next door neighbour’s roof.
There were twelve of these gaps I had to navigate to reach the opposite house. At this rate it was going to take much longer than two hours to get there, scope the road and get back. It wasn’t too late to go back and try a little earlier the next night, but the shit was starting to pile high in my gutter and I wanted to get out of that loft ASAP.
It took me well over an hour and a half to reach the house. I got in to a rhythm after the first couple of houses and did so without making a squeak. It was all for nought though. I climbed the last roof and stood open mouthed at the carnage before me.
There were cars everywhere. Roads and paths were full of them. Total gridlock. Doors askew. Blood covered everything, with the deedaz wandering through the mess checking interiors for meat.
I sat down and sobbed. The loss of life had been immense judging from the rivers of congealed blood. As I turned from the grotesque sight and prepared for the long climb back, I glanced down into the bicycle track that wound its way throughout the estate and saw it was clear of cars. Also, the entrance to the track was blocked by a large removal van. There were a few deedaz waddling down the enclosed path but not as many as in the streets and in my house. I decided if I was going to leave this would have to be my escape route and hoped the cycle path’s other narrow entrances around the estate were similarly inaccessible.
On my way back to my house I saw that the house two down from me backed onto a field that one of the cycling tracks ran through. This part of the track was somehow free of zombies as far as I could tell. Deciding my best course of action would be to collect my bugout bag and vacate through this avenue of least resistance, I climbed the remaining houses and made it back to my humble if not stinking abode.
Chapter 13 The experiment
I’d been clocked by the deedaz down in the street and they had somehow zeroed in on my house and began to filter through the garage and into the garden again. Once back inside and as quietly as I could I opened the loft hatch and peeked down. Seconds after I did the dead fucks downstairs let out a collective moan that shook my bones. Somehow they’d heard me. I was so quiet though. Had something in them changed?
Before I decided to leave, an experiment would be needed to resolve my suspicions. If they were changing I needed to know before I took flight.
How had they detected me? It couldn’t have been with those milky excuses they called eyes. Unless the milky film was some sort of science fucktion infrared shit! I hoped not.
I lowered the ladders down through the loft hatch, taking no care in how much noise I made. They knew I was there so I wasn’t going to waste energy gently lowering myself down. I entered my bedroom and retrieved a large jar from under the bed. In it was an accumulation of around one year’s worth of coins from nightly emptied pockets. Before I climbed back into the loft I spared a peek down the broken stairs. My heart stopped. There in front of me, from the waist up, was a deeda. Had they learned to fucking fly now? When my heart finally started beating I realised it was standing on the bodies of other deedaz. The tide of dead I’d created when hopping the houses had crushed the deedaz together so tightly they’d made a bridge of death. Zombies from the kitchen had somehow climbed up and for want of a better phrase were fucking crowd surfing toward the broken stairs.
The zombie, at seeing live flesh, scrambled up towards me. I turned and ran for the steps. Again, that awful sensation of being chased by my dad panicked me in to virtually jumping up in to the loft. All this with the jar of coins in tow. Why I didn’t drop them, I’ll never know. Just as I made it through the hatch I heard the clatter of the ladders falling.
Fuck!
I mean, I could probably manage without the ladders. The drop from the roof to the garage wasn’t far but I’d planned on roof hopping to the house that backed onto the field and cycle path. I could always drop into next door’s garden from their garage and climb over the fences between to get to the cycle track, but what if my route was blocked by my adoring fans? I’d never be able to get back to the relative safety of my loft. There was nothing for it. Adapt and overcome.
Decisions had to be made. Firstly, I had to ascertain what abilities the deedaz had ‘evolved’, if any. I took the coins to the hole in the roof took out a pund chunk (pound coin) and lobbed it as far as I could. It landed with a clatter on top of the car that had crashed on the day this all started. Every head that was still in the street turned towards the car followed by an unearthly chorus of wailing from the putrid bastards. A stumbling tsunami of flesh converged on the car looking for the source of the noise the coin had made. As soon as they arrived at the car and realised nothing warm was around they fell silent. Well at least they hadn’t suddenly found the skill of sprinting. Still old school. Thank fuck.
The next coin made it past the car and hit the curb opposite, making a much lesser noise. Like meerkats the dead turned en masse at the sound and moved again. Next, I threw a coin on to the grass. The dull thud it made was virtually undetectable. If they homed in on that then I was fucked. Proper proper proper fucked.
Luckily none o
f them turned. So, super zombie radar hearing was not the reason they had gone ape shit when I slid the loft hatch open. Sight wasn’t the reason either. The view of the loft hatch from the living room was slightly obscured by the wall. That realistically only left scent. Could they smell me from all the way downstairs through the loft hatch? And so quickly? And with the smell of rotten milkyeggpoo rising from them? The only conclusion I came up with was the draft from the hole in the roof must have drawn my scent through the hatch and taken it through the house and out of the back door. This resulted in an evergrowing ruckus and attracted more of them from the street and into the garage.
Now as you know, I’d been stuck in that loft for over a month and had regularly cleaned myself with wet wipes, but to say I was ripe would be an understatement. The clean clothes I’d taken with me into the loft had all been worn twice over. I had spare clothes in the bugout bag but they were for emergency use only. The only thing I had left that didn’t stink of body odour and bum was a camouflaged onesie that the ex had bought me to go with the survival course she’d given me for my fortieth birthday. That would have to do. I’d look like a fucking lunatic but I didn’t think the zombies would mind. They’d probably still smell me if they were close but with a bit of luck, the right wind direction and a jolly good wiping down I might just escape unscathed.
Chapter 14 The inevitable journey
The dilemma now was where to go when I reached the cycle path. As the crow flies the town I live in is around five miles west of the coast. Once there I could maybe find a boat and sail/motor to any one of the numerous islands along the coastline or maybe get picked up by some fellow survivors. I’m no seaman but understood the principles of sailing. How hard could it be to follow the beach while out at sea? Lots of things to eat there too, and fresh water if I timed the tides correctly and sailed far enough up any of the multitude of rivers along the way. And as far as I knew the deedaz couldn’t swim. I hoped.
It's Grim Up North (Book 1): It's Grim Up North Page 4
